The crossing was not a clean line of trenches and sandbags. Close up, James saw it was much more ordinary than that.
The road came south over the stream on a low concrete bridge and ran on past the edge of an industrial estate. On the near side, the Irish had dug in among whatever was there. There was a tyre centre with its shutters down, a builders' merchant with pallets of blocks stacked in the yard, and a row of low units with their signs still lit. A garden wall ran along the road. Three cars had been abandoned in the middle of it with their doors open. Soldiers were crouched behind all of it, firing.
Further back, behind James, the evacuation was still going on. An ambulance was turning in the road with its back doors open and a medic hanging out of them. Two soldiers were trying to lift a man with his leg strapped into the back of a jeep. Every time they got him halfway up he cried out, and they had to stop.
